Have you ever walked a trail loop in a state park or similar setting? You can usually
begin your walk near a parking area and there are often several trails that begin,
including longer, more strenuous hikes to a place from which to catch a magnificent
view. There are often paved, level walks for those who use a wheelchair or who want
to enjoy the forest without breaking a sweat. And then there are the loops. These
are often shorter than some of the other trails and may be seen by veteran hikers
as a baby route. If I choose a trail loop I see the all-business hikers go by me
with their backpacks full of trail mix and water to keep them going while they
seek that zenith of scenery they can reach only by working every muscle in their
bodies. Here I am on my little loop, looking down at mossy, fallen logs and gazing
up at, in one instance, giant redwoods with branches that sweep from top to bottom
of trunks and sway in the breeze and leave me with the scent of ancient times
sitting in my nostrils.

Yes, metaphor is afoot here. Life has a variety of trails and we each walk in them
all at some point or another. The loops may not be the rockiest or the most scenic,
but they can be the most fulfilling if we come back to the parking area with a
sense of having been somewhere important.

When we write we use them all. There are level trails with corresponding ease of
movement and rocky banks with shallow footholds and painful grabbing places that
require care but have huge rewards in terms of story climaxes. Then there are
the loops that seem circular and easy at first, but are ultimately full of internal
growth and completion of life processes. Every story needs them all. Every life needs
them all.

In real life, we often lose track of time when we're busy concentrating or are engaged
in something we enjoy. Time doesn't really go any faster during these activities.
We know that, but we still speak of time going faster. Likewise, when we read an
exciting story we can become so immersed in the whole thing that we lose track of
time. Writing such a story might not be exciting during every phase of the work, but
if the story is a good one, a writer might lose track of time while caught up in
some scenes or sections. If that isn't happening at all on a project it might be
time to rethink the whole story. If it's not making time pass quickly for the writer,
it's likely to have a similar effect on the reader.

Some people are more likely to speak if they have something negative to say. This
isn't a judgment, but merely an observation. A friend used to tell me about a
co-worker I'll call Sam who everyone dreaded seeing. It seems that Sam could bend
your ear for the better part of an hour, telling you what was wrong with the
company where they worked. Sam was generally quiet when contented and if you
pressed him he would even come up with pleasant things to say. But if he came to
a meeting or went to lunch with co-workers he was able to turn the conversation
to a season of griping and complaining in no time at all. I don't know if it was
a habit or something else. But there it was.

I tell you this because it reminds me of how important voice is in telling a
fictional story. If I told you a story I would have a very different way of
telling the story than Sam would have. I might tell you about how the main
character came in last in a footrace. I might talk about the race in terms of
tomorrow being another day and of how the main character felt that he or she would
do better next time. Sam might tell you about the same character and the same
race. But Sam might focus more on the way coming in last had been inevitable.
There would be a subtle shift in what Sam would zero in on when picking the
details of a setting.

And what if Sam was your main character? Would Sam run the race with high hopes?
Would Sam feel fatigue long before the end of the course? And what if Sam was
telling/writing the story and had a very positive, upbeat kind of main character to
write about? What would Sam say and how would he say it? What's Sam's voice? What's
yours?

One of the reasons I never enjoyed golf is because playing golf is full of built-in
distractions. Most courses are quite scenic and are barely noticed as people put
their gaze on the ball and concentrate on their swing or putt. I suppose people
might be enjoying the scenery in a peripheral sense, but I find it frustrating to
concentrate on the swings and the scores when I'd really rather be enjoying that
scenery. The problem is that I have just enough of a competitive nature that I can't
do that as long as I know I'm expected to be working toward a low score.

When we write fiction we have the goal of making it a good read for the reader. We
have to deliver the plot by pacing, a little like playing 18 holes of golf.
We also have the goal of keeping the reader interested long enough to actually
enjoy the story enough to read to the end of it. If we're in too much of a hurry
to get the reader to the end of the story we might make them miss the details of
the scenery along the way. For some people, the destination is only as great as the
trip to get there.

We had a rain shower this morning after days of rain. What was different this morning
was that the clouds were directly overhead, but the sun had begun to shine in other areas of
the sky. The sunlight gave an odd glow to the falling rain and forced a completely
different mood when I stood and watched it out the window. I thought of the way we
present a stormy time in writing fiction. A mood of gloom can be pervasive through
whole novels, but if we want to give the reader a sense of the hope behind difficult
times we can always show events, even sad events, with a side lighting of sun and
hope. Weather is a powerful metaphor in fiction anyway. Using it to reset the
mood on an otherwise angry, romantic or lonely scene can leave the reader with an
entirely different sense of what is going on in a story. It could add hope. It
could add irony. It could be done with natural light or it could be done with
a lantern, a campfire, candles or lasers. It depends on the setting, the genre
and maybe even the characters themselves. Filmmakers and play producers use
lighting to their advantage all the time. Why shouldn't writers?

I've been watching the drama back East in the race between Martha Coakley and Scott
Brown. For some time it's been evident that Republicans have longed for a rising
star who would captivate Republicans much the way Barack Obama captivated Democrats
a few years ago. I can see the murmurs of hope going on as more and more
Republicans make remarks about how charismatic and handsome Mr. Brown is.

There's nothing wrong with wanting someone to step up and be the golden boy (or girl)
to lead a political party to victory. But Republicans need to remember that one man
or woman will not possess a perfect set of qualities. President Obama knows what it's
like to be put on a pedestal and then put under a microscope not long afterward. The
same thing could happen to Scott Brown. When people are feeling the need for a hero
and are wanting to get behind a cause they can sometimes set themselves up for
disappointment.

I should relate this all to writing. When a larger-than-life character looms up
before the writer's imagination, it's good to be balanced. Even comic book heroes
who fly and save whole planets usually have at least one identifiable flaw or
weakness. Making your main character too perfect might keep readers from being
able to identify with his or her challenges during the course of the story.

I did something today on a lark, something very good for me, but totally unexpected and
unscheduled. It was so unlike what we're instructed to do as fiction writers. We're
encouraged to outline or do detailed character sketches, have daily writing goals and discipline.
But there's something to be said for just getting good things done in life. That can
also be true for writing. It's not wrong to make detailed character sketches or create
outlines. But We can spend so much time thinking and planning and developing that
we never get around to just telling the story.

It's been tough to concentrate on writing today. We've had a series of windy storms
coming through California. That probably evokes a "So what?" from those of
you who live with snow drifts, sleet and sub-freezing temperatures each winter. But
you have to remember that we get virtually all our measurable rain during the winter
months. Then there are the problems involving a large state with a large population.
And our terrain varies from valleys to coast to deserts to mountains. Torrential
rains can bring mudslides and small stream flooding in a short amount of time, cutting
people comletely off escape routes. Earlier today there were tornado warnings in Los
Angeles County and Orange County. It's not that common for buildings to have
basements here, which means a lot of people had no good place to go in the event of
a tornado. We all seem to manage survive such inconveniences, but it can be difficult
to keep tasks going when thunder and lightning shake the windows, power outages
interrupt electronic devices and the flooding roads and falling trees make travel a
challenge.

The good side is that all of this gives a sense of scale to what one might be writing
about in a fictional work. Your main character may be having a few inconveniences at the
beginning of your tale. That's a good thing. As you draw readers into the tale you will
want to ramp up the difficulties. They might parallel or even rival whatever internal
conflict the character is experiencing. However you handle it, make it count. Shorten
the rope, put a flooded tunnel on the only escape route, squeeze the options down into
a kit so narrow that the only way out still looks like a brick wall. You won't exhaust
your readers too much. And if you do, they may still thank you for it.

When I realized I had forgotten to post earlier today I almost decided to skip the
task altogether. I know it's better to stick with a schedule. But I'm not a night
person and it's 10:30pm here. Is it prudent for this writer to stick with the
discipline of writing on a strict schedule, even when I know I'm off my game? I'm
never sure about such things. My writing under such conditions may end up being
disappointing to the reader, but there is value in knowing that I wrote because it
was time to write. For tonight, I do have that. Are you developing your own
writing discipline? If so, I hope it gives you a boost to keep going.

What a week it's been with the earthquake in Haiti, the electronic hacking of Google and other
companies and several other news stories that have made people angry, confused, shocked
and sad. While many of us have had loved ones directly affected by one of these major
incidents, many of us have not. We stare at the still images, read the accounts, listen to the
broadcasts and view videos with the feeling of being in the moment with those going
through these things.

When writers write fiction we have to think about this same sort of phenomenon. Someone
who reads a story isn't actually going through any of the actions, but they may experience
a lot of the same emotions they would experience if the situations were real. It makes
the written word a sort of sacred trust, in my opinion. We have an obligation to use
integrity when we write, even when what we write includes the tales of scoundrels and
disasters. We can write that happy ending, but we know that there is not always a happy
ending in today's life. We can't see the end from the beginning. And even if we don't
write a happy ending we need to be sure to give the reader some sense that the events
were worth going through vicariously, for growth or enrichment. Otherwise, our story
conflict becomes sensational and gratuitous. We have to be willing to go down the emotional
road of the story ourselves so that we can be honest and trustworthy to take our reader
down that same path.

It seems that Google is talking about the
possibility of not doing business with China. A lot of political pundits are
expressing kudos to Google for its bold moves on this issue. But it could have
far-reaching effects into other business and the politics/relationships of other
companies and organizations that deal with China.

Since I've been trying to tie regular life to writing life lately, I started thinking
about the way characters "do business" in a novel, a screenplay or other work
that's fictional. Particularly in a longer work, there may be characters in your story
who interact only with a few other characters and never even meet certain minor characters.
Or they may interact with other characters at a specific point in the story. I was
making notes about a current project this morning and wondered what would happen if I started my
about a third of the way into the story instead of at the beginning. I would have to rearrange the
way certain characters interacted and would have to assume they had already met one another.
After doing some preliminary sketches on paper, it all made better sense. I had been preparing
too much backstory in my head and had been trying to fit it into the beginning. What I needed to
do was start farther along in the story and have the characters already in the thick of
events with one another. The readers are smart enough to figure out what's going on and
they might even appreciate a little more pedal-to-the-metal approach. It could be a lot
more compelling than setting up the serene little place I had first imagined at the
start of this project.

The next nail-biter is going to come if I have to decide whether two major characters
have to "stop doing business" by disappearing, agreeing to dissagree or
fighting to the death. It's a dirty business, but some writer's got to do it.

It's been a long day, so I'm going to just suggest that you contemplate the use of
a charitable organization in helping the folks in Haiti who have been dealing with
a large earthquake and all that goes with it. There's a bit of shock that develops
after these events and that makes it tough to handle tasks immediately following
a quake, except for the actions that come directly from the adrenaling surges. So
it's important that folks from the outside who are not personally being shaken
step in to help where and when we can.

I wonder if most story writing fits together much the way a piece of music does. Is there an
theme, a bit of jazzy dissonance here and there, sets of events that harmonize, a strong
modulation to the story's climax? Is there a feeling of resolution and closure at
the end of the story? It's all yet another way of approaching the craft of
telling a tale.

The week has swallowed its own tail, er, tale. Perhaps both. I used to hear that when
your day and weeks seem to go quickly that it meant you were happy. If that's true, I
must be one of the happiest people on the planet. I have snippets of writing to work
with, but other tasks have overshadowed writer time. No, wait. That's not quite correct.
They have overshadowed writer conentration. Sitting quietly for several minutes at a
time is necessary for true writer work and that has simply not been possible this week.
So we come to the end of a work week and have snippets. That would be pitiful, except
for the fact that they are what could be very pivotal snippets. And so, we'll call it a
head start on next week's tasks. Yes, that's it. Of course.

Writing today has consisted mainly of items for an organization, so fiction has been
set aside. I was thinking about how important it is to incorporate everyday activities
into fiction without making them seem trivial and distracting. We all get groceries
or stand in line at a post office, but we rarely remember any of these occasions
unless something unusual happens, such as running across a friend or finding a
twenty-dollar bill near the door. That also works well in stories. If there's going
to be a big scene anyway, why not have it at the butcher shop or the hardware store?
Or the church social hall kitchen?

I'm struggling today trying to figure out why talented people with many resources
end up fighting the current machine instead of finding a new one. There are two sides to artistic
endeavors--creating the art and marketing the art. Many of us are good at the
first, but terrible at the second. We know what we have is of worth. We took time
to create it. But we seem to allow regular avenues of marketing and traditional
methods of distribution to stall the sharing of our work.

There have never been so many ways to get artistic works of all kinds out there
for others to enjoy. But this is also a time of transition. People want to get
their work promoted by the same old methods. We're going to have to break out of
the old ways and be as unique and dogged about marketing as we are about being
unique and dogged in creating.

One of the things that helps me get things done is to take one task each day that I
haven't worked on for awhile and do a little work on it. It helps with projects
around the house, but it also helps the battle with office clutter. Best of all, it
helps with writing projects. I can take one file and clean it out, or take one
work in progress and do a little polishing or editing. I can certainly start a new
project, but starting is easy for me. It's finishing that gets me into difficulty.
In this case, the goal is to take something already in progress and make it better,
add to it, edit superfluous words. Now and then a project gets tossed. It's tough
to do that, but if the project still sticks in my mind I can always pick up the idea
and run with it again. Writers tend to be paperholics to some extent, so working on
a few pieces of paper here and there helps keep the clutter monster at bay and has
even been known to spark the marriage of two writing projects into a larger, more
involved piece of writing.

Those who are wise will tell you that throwing out the first paragraph of a story will
often give you the best beginning to a story that you can have. With that in mind, I
just wrote and deleted my first blog post of 2010. It felt great. Stay tuned tomorrow
for an actual post.